Assuming you're talking about Windows machines here: Because no Windows OEM puts as much work into the trackpad as Apple does, it would seem. It's both a driver issue and a quality issue.

I've never had a problem with Apple trackpads in the last eight or nine years or so, but the trackpad on my 2011 HP laptop at work is horrendous and the same goes for pretty much every trackpad I encounter on the Windows side. When using a Macbook, I'm completely fine with using the trackpad. When using a Windows laptop, I frantically grasp for the nearest free mouse so I can connect it.

The concept is faulty because so many things we take for granted are much harder on a touchpad. Touchpads are two handed devices, one for tracking, one to operate the buttons, as one hand alone doesn't have the dexterity.

Now what if you want to click, drag, hold ctrl, and drop? Crazy hand twisting is what happens and it just pisses you off.

So to alleviate this, the manufacturers fucked up the execution by including "tap to click". So you get spurious clicks when you're moving the pointer around as you can't slip from one area to another without raising your finger off if you hit the edge of the pad.

Then they included "scroll areas", so you get less pad to play with and end up scrolling around when you actually want to just move the pointer. Then the likes of Dell and Apple brought in multitouch and gestures, which fuck up the whole "Assume we have a mouse" paradigm even more by making the touchpad even less like the mouse it's entire purpose for existing is to emulate.

Yet a really old Thinkpad I have has a small trackball built in. It's a fucking dream to use.

I've kind of wondered with all the small mouses they make these days.. why they haven't decided to give up a portion of the case to fit a laser mouse that pops out and is wireless... I suppose the mouse for laptops is destined to be replaced by touch-screens in the long term..

I've kind of wondered with all the small mouses they make these days.. why they haven't decided to give up a portion of the case to fit a laser mouse that pops out and is wireless... I suppose the mouse for laptops is destined to be replaced by touch-screens in the long term..

This is making the same mistake as the touchpad did. They are inherently different and, the mouse is better, more flexible and more ergonomic. A desktop or laptop device cannot be touchscreen as it'll fall into the gorilla hands UI problem - People are not meant to interact via accurate touches with something in front of them, it doesn't work well.

The concept is faulty because so many things we take for granted are much harder on a touchpad. Touchpads are two handed devices, one for tracking, one to operate the buttons, as one hand alone doesn't have the dexterity.

Now what if you want to click, drag, hold ctrl, and drop? Crazy hand twisting is what happens and it just pisses you off.

So to alleviate this, the manufacturers fucked up the execution by including "tap to click". So you get spurious clicks when you're moving the pointer around as you can't slip from one area to another without raising your finger off if you hit the edge of the pad.

Then they included "scroll areas", so you get less pad to play with and end up scrolling around when you actually want to just move the pointer. Then the likes of Dell and Apple brought in multitouch and gestures, which fuck up the whole "Assume we have a mouse" paradigm even more by making the touchpad even less like the mouse it's entire purpose for existing is to emulate.

Yet a really old Thinkpad I have has a small trackball built in. It's a fucking dream to use.

Can't say I've ever really had these problems, even back to the early/mid 90s when I first started using one.

Just spend a minute (or less) setting up the behavior for it initially and it'll work just fine.

Then again, I also tend to prefer a trackball to a mouse when I'm using a separate pointing device, so maybe it's just me.

I haven't tried many modern big-size PC laptop trackpads (Trackpoint for life!) but one of the nicer touches about the big Apple trackpads is that you can rest your thumb where the button would be without it registering that as a "touch." So then you just press down with the thumb whenever you want to click, without having to raise it.

I haven't tried many modern big-size PC laptop trackpads (Trackpoint for life!) but one of the nicer touches about the big Apple trackpads is that you can rest your thumb where the button would be without it registering that as a "touch." So then you just press down with the thumb whenever you want to click, without having to raise it.

Apple has a surface that is pleasant to the touch, good drivers on OS X (behaves like your average trackpad in windows or worse) and yeah the fact that the buttons don't register when touch them is a nice touch. I still prefer dedicated buttons though, but I don't have a loathing for it like I have for some of the laptops students that come to me for problems have. Nothing worse than a clickpad where the "buttons" (if you can call them that) register touch too. You can't use one hand with those for certain.

The trackpoint like those on thinkpads is indeed nice. I remember having a very old laptop (quite a while back too) running windows 3.11 that had a ball instead of the trackpad/trackpoint. I can't remember what hardware that thing was packing though.

To me pads can be made tolerable, even nice, if the sensitivity is right and gestures are supported. Nipples can't do things like two finger scroll and swipe back/forward.

The Synaptics pads (what Apple uses, I think) can have configurable gestures on a PC with the right drivers. But for some reason the major OEMs like Dell and HP insist on having a few abominations that use Alps. Fuck Alps.

I haven't found a better way to work at a desk than with a magic trackpad and keyboard in the pull-out keyboard tray. (Not having a useless-to-me number pad helps).

Apple has gotten the trackpad right. But Apple trackpads have been very usable for over a decade.

I agree that Apple has trackpads down pretty well, and I certainly prefer their trackpads to any other mobile input method, but I tried the trackpad-as-mouse-replacement for desktop use when Lion came out (I liked having access to the gestures). I gave it a week. It just did't stick. I found it quite a bit slower, and I found it causing wrist fatigue more quickly. It was especially annoying for graphics work and text editing, especially writing code (where there's lots of precise cursor repositioning).

I am a fan of Trackpads and I've tweaked them to my liking. Here is how I do it on my HP Envy 15 (to be fair, this is the first HP that I can use two finger scrolling well). My operation is almost always one handed with my other hand on the keyboard.

1. I don't use clicking, just tapping. Tapping on the main touchpad area clicks or clicks and drags. Tapping the left button section (not clicking) middle clicks and tapping on the right button section right clicks.

2. Two finger scrolling works pretty well. Earlier models didn't work as well as the surface area was too small (so it would rubber band if one of the fingers went off the pad instead of just stopping). The current model works very well.

3. I've turned up acceleration all the way so I can generally flick anywhere on the screen in two swipes.

On the Mac, I will say that they did something that makes it difficult for my quick usage. They introduce a delay when i'm tapping to drag. So for the Mac, when I drag a window or anything, I need to not move the cursor for .5 of a second if I want to select something else. Even though it doesn't seem like a lot, it feels like a lot and slows me down. The other thing is that their boot camp drivers are awful, almost unusable for me (the acceleration is way off).

I will have to admit that there is one downside to my current setup. The trackpad is centered on the laptop but is not centered on the keyboard, so my palm brushes against it sometimes. I've tweaked the palm detection settings to make it better but it's still not perfect. I generally type with my right hand hovering above the palmrest now.

I preferred nubbins to trackpads on Windows laptops (mostly ThinkPads, but more recently Dell, Toshiba, Sony), but ai hated both, Then I switched to a Mac book Pro in 2008 and I felt, for the first time I felt like integrated pointing devices were actually adequate, and Apple has improved on the since then. I use a magic trackpad on my desk, which also doesn't suck (though i want to add a mouse to the mix for variety).

Trackpads may have some inherent disadvantages, but so does any integrated or descrete pointing device. PC trackpads suck because no one has put enough effort into making them not suck.

Are you using a Mac or a PC laptop? Macs have this little setting (on by default) called "Detect accidental trackpad input". Not sure about Windows though.

But I guess it ultimately depends on how you use it, I for example don't seem to touch the trackpad while typing with my hands rested on the laptop so I have this setting disabled to increase the trackpad's sensitivity, and never experienced the shifting cursor while typing.

I agree that trackpads suck in general, but I can't agree that that applies to Apple's trackpads. I've hated them for years on both Windows and Macs (pre-multitouch, for the Macs), and always carried a portable mouse with my laptops.

When I got a recent iMac, though, it came with either their multitouch "Magic Mouse" or a multitouch "Magic Trackpad". I've tried the mouse and hated it, so I opted for the trackpad, figuring I'd just use it for multitouch gestures, or quickly put it back in the box. After week, though, I found I wasn't using my old USB mouse at all. Over a year later, the mouse is still plugged in, but it's got a layer of dust on it. And now that I've updated my laptop to a MacBook Pro with the multitouch trackpad, I no longer use the portable mouse in the laptop bag.

TL,DR: Apple's trackpads convinced me that it's possible for trackpads to not suck, to my surprise and contrary to all previous experiences.

I'm in love with my Magic Trackpad on the desktop with a matching wireless keyboard for 95% of my usage patterns. I keep a bluetooth mouse though for the other 5% of things just that don't work well on the trackpad. I'd never try to game or do fine graphics work using the magic trackpad.

When I started carrying a MacBook though I finally ditched the mobile mouse. Every Windows laptop I've owned had a gawd awful trackpad.

I think people who rant and rave or complain about touchpads just need to learn to deal with it. They're just going to be bad for the next few generations, until, I presume, touchscreens will just make the touchpad obsolete on consumer machines.

Frankly I find no difference between PC and Mac touchpads. Multitouch support and all. People say that t he Apple clickpad is the next best thing since optical mice were invented, but jaysus I've never noticed it being any better or worse than a touchpad on a PC laptop (personally I think it's worse because there's no fucking physical mouse buttons).

I've never had any problems with the trackpad accidentally picking up my palms while I typed. As much as I dislike track/touchpads, I'm really good with them simply because every single laptop out there has one. Personally, it's all a matter of adaptability: I know some people who absolutely despise them and can't use the fucking things if their lives depended in it, meanwhile the completely tech unsavvy office mates who can't even turn on their own laptops have no troubles with touchpads at all.

The trackpad on my Asus Zenbook (ux31e) is absolutely terrible. It got even worse in Windows 8. If I make the mistake of attempting two finger scrolling in any metro app (including the start screen) I have to wait half a minute for the scrolling to stop. It very, very slowly scrolls for tens of seconds after I take my hand off the trackpad.

On my old Thinkpad, which had utterly dreadful touchpad support in Win7, I found updating to Win8 made it very responsive and useable. 2 finger scroll works reasonably. But digging into the Synaptics drivers is a must if you want to get a trackpad under Windows working for your personal needs.

stupid apple and their reliance on trackpads and multitouch gestures pushed a lot of PC manufacturers to go the trackpad route as the laptop market started overtaking desktops.

the trackpoint was a far superior portable pointing solution IMO.

i will say this. every time I use an apple trackpad, I am pleasently surprised with the default speed and acceleration settings while ever PC touchpad I've ever used was a PoS out of the box and required a lot of fiddling. A lot has to do with the glass surface of the apple trackpad too. Apple's doing something right...

every time I use an apple trackpad, I am pleasently surprised with the default speed and acceleration settings while ever PC touchpad I've ever used was a PoS out of the box and required a lot of fiddling. A lot has to do with the glass surface of the apple trackpad too. Apple's doing something right...

This has been true for at least 6 years, long before the glass trackpads started appearing on Apple portables. Apple's been doing it right for a long, long time - which is why it's so puzzling that PC makers haven't managed to figure it out yet.

every time I use an apple trackpad, I am pleasently surprised with the default speed and acceleration settings while ever PC touchpad I've ever used was a PoS out of the box and required a lot of fiddling. A lot has to do with the glass surface of the apple trackpad too. Apple's doing something right...

This has been true for at least 6 years, long before the glass trackpads started appearing on Apple portables. Apple's been doing it right for a long, long time - which is why it's so puzzling that PC makers haven't managed to figure it out yet.

I would bet that Apple actually spent the time to tweak the driver under OS X to make the trackpad more usable because under Windows, it performs the same as any other trackpad. That said, I personally find the Apple trackpad too big and it is a clickpad. Even if the buttons don't register touch, it's still a frickin clickpad and it messes with the tactile feedback of finding the buttons.

Something like this is just right for me:

Not too large, but not ridiculously small either, three buttons (the third one opens a link in a new tab in Opera by default). I can use only one hand and still be able to easily reach the buttons. It did require some driver tweaking, pointer speed was alright out of the box, but I had to disable things like inertial scrolling, drag lock, make sure that touch guard was enabled, etc. The trackpad on my G73Jh was just plain terrible though no matter what I tweaked. So here's a TP that works after tweaking it, but then there is a trackpoint right above it...

I have a MacBook Pro, and used it with bootcamp for almost a year. The large apple trackpad extended under my right hand, unlike the small trackpad on my old dell. This meant I was accidentally hitting the trackpad all the time with my palm near my thumb and causing my mouse to move unexpectedly. It drove me crazy. My solution was to paste a post-it note to the right side of the trackpad, which solved the problem.

The interesting thing is that I never had this problem when using OS X on the same laptop. When I switched to using OS X full time, then I was able to remove the post-it and had absolutely none of the problems of my hand hitting the trackpad. I think it is the drivers, filtering out the unintentional taps on the MacBook. The drivers on the Win7 bootcamp side just don't have the same tweaking.

If there is one area where Apple is way ahead, it is in trackpads. There is no comparison between trackpads on the Mac versus any Windows machine I have used. I thought the Magic Trackpad would be just a gimmick, but I've started using it based on other people's recommendations and it is great. Gestures on the mac are fabulous, swiping to go back a page in the browser feels very modern, they are very well done. Trackpads on Windows machines are for emergency use only, but on the MacBook it feels like a full featured pointing device.

You aren't paying enough for your laptop to get one with a non-sucky trackpad driver?

Does every laptop have to have its own specific driver? AFAIK, almost all laptops use either a Synaptics or an Alps trackpad, with Synaptics generally considered the better of the two. Every Synaptics Windows trackpad driver I've used still sucks, even on expensive machines. You'd think both companies would've invested the money by now into making a good driver, and that driver could be used on every machine with the company's trackpad.

Also, even expensive machines can have terrible trackpad drivers. As many others mentioned, Apple's trackpad drivers for Windows suck. They used to suck so bad that multi-touch gestures could blue screen the computer. Until they fixed that one, I had to completely disable multi-touch or risk blue screens when I two-finger right clicked.

You aren't really paying for the Windows trackpad driver if you buy a Mac. I mean, of course you are but that's not where Apple is investing the majority of their effort.

I wasn't even talking about Apple. I have used ThinkPads and they have good wrist rejection on their trackpads. While the driver version says Synaptics 16.2.19.2, it's also officially listed as the ThinkPad UltraNav Pointing Device, meaning it at least has a customized set of strings in the driver, possibly more.

My current laptop has an Alps trackpad, I was anticipating having a very bad trackpad, but it's actually better than some Synaptics trackpads I've used in the past. Granted, I had to set it the way I wanted it, but it performs quite well which is more than I can say for other trackpads that were horrible no matter how I changed the driver settings. Oh and yeah, I made sure I was not under the influence of some kind of substance when I noticed that. Synaptics with good drivers is still better in my opinion, but specifically tailored drivers can really make or break trackpads. I personally consider Apple's OS X trackpad drivers to be specialized drivers. Yes, they are made for every Apple notebook, but considering how they have very little different models, it is still at the level of being tailored to specific laptops. I'd bet that Apple also took the time to test their drivers until there were at the level they are now.

On the other hand you have so many windows laptops and on cheap manufacturers, the OEMs don't bother making sure the drivers make for a good experience. If you're paying for a higher quality laptop, you have higher chances of getting a usable trackpad, but it still isn't always the case. Let's just say that there is a lot of variability among trackpad on Windows notebooks, many manufacturers (Synaptics, Alps, Syntelic, Elantech) as well as different driver implementations. I've mostly been using synaptics trackpads and I've seen cases where the generic driver didn't play nice while the manufacturer's drivers were offering better (but still disappointing performance). I have seen the opposite as well, the generic driver performing better than the latest version available from the laptop's OEM.

The driver files shows two Alps-authored files in \system32, and then a bunch of files in Program Files\DellTPad - some of which are Alps authored, some Microsoft-authored, and the rest "Unknown" (looks like gesture support).